Friday, September 16, 2011

Greed


Lately I have been having a hard time with feeling greedy about my sexual appetites and interests, and I want to break the habit of feeling this way, because I don't think the feelings are accurate and realistic.  In actuality, I am being open, careful, thoughtful, ethical, and as communicative as I can be, and that doesn't seem like greed to me. For the first time in my life, I am working very hard on verbalizing what my needs and wants are, and making an effort to have them met. I just might have a lot of needs and wants.  Or maybe I don't... I don't think I have an appropriate scale to weigh what "a lot" is. And I am realizing that there is probably no standard that is fair, that we all need and want differently, at different times in our lives.

My marriage with Intaglio did not have much in terms of sexual happiness on my part. We were together for 17 years and I was unsatisfied for most of those years in terms of sex.  I had a larger appetite and was much more curious about all sorts of things, but he did not encourage me in any way, and in fact he often seemed scared, judgmental, and turned off by any expressions of female sexuality on my part.  I tried many times and many ways to discuss these issues with him over the years, but it only made me feel worse.  I felt ashamed and greedy, like a slut who could never be satisfied.  He was almost puritanical in his thoughts about sex, and I felt like when it did happen, I should be grateful.  But it was never enough (it was infrequent, and not physically satisfying to me anyway, most of the time, probably because he was uninterested in actually meeting my needs)  In efforts to satisfy my needs, I hid porn and sex toys, and kept my fantasies to myself, hidden secretly away. I never cheated on him. I honestly see how one could be driven to cheat in such a situation, though but I am too ethical for that.

Now I know that there were many reasons why he was the way he was and I am still trying to figure out why I continued on in that state for many years, telling myself that sex was not an important issue in a relationship.  I convinced myself that I didn't need to explore all of these thoughts and feelings (and they were probably abnormal anyway). I don't have the answers to why and how my marriage was so terrible for so long, and I might never fully understand it. The point is, I became pretty comfortable denying my sexual needs.

I spent a couple of years after the divorce resentfully blaming him for making me this way, but that is not exactly fair.  Yes, he was emotionally controlling (and questionably emotionally abusive) and he used my sexuality as a way to keep me imprisoned in the relationship using shame and guilt.  But I could have fought harder for independence and I could have left eariler... those were my choices, my responsibility.  I was not strong enough to leave and even moreso, I didn't think he was strong enough to handle me leaving. Now the relationship is long gone and faded and I need to own up to my issues and do the work that I need to do to make myself whole.  But that ghost of shame remains, and it is strong, and the feelings of shame and guilt are still very much with me.  Post divorce, I still struggle with these feelings, even though I have been with sexual partners who have been encouraging and accepting. I still feel greedy for wanting so much.

Now my relationship with my partner Damascus is very different than with my ex-husband. Our relationship seems to be reasonably healthy and we get along well and work hard at communicating. And we have amazing sex! Frequently! I realized though, that I still have a very hard time asking for what I want and need. It is painfully hard for me to even think about asking him to go down on me, or to shower me with kisses in a good old fashioned make-out session, or whatever else I might be craving.  And it is frustrating because I know he would not call me greedy, and he would not judge me.  He would probably be thrilled that I expressed these things to him.  But it is so hard to just get the words out of my mouth.  They are just stuck there, on the tip of my tongue, echoing in my head, and they sometimes stay there until the feelings just go away. And then I get a little angry at myself for letting the moment pass.

I have been reading The New Bottoming Book by Dossie Easton & Janet W. Hardy (which is a book about the psychology of the "bottom" or "submissive" in a S/M Relationship, and it has been very helpful to me.  There is a section about "Reclaiming Our Greed" that really spoke to me:

" 'Greedy' is often used as a pejorative term, both outside the S/M communities and within them.  We would like to propose the reclamation of the word 'greedy'. There's nothing wrong with wanting a lot; there's nothing wrong with getting a lot.  In fact, the more you get, the more you have to give...A bottom who has acknowledged his or her needs and wants, and who is getting them met, is usually an open-hearted, generous, supportive bottom...Greed and generosity are two sides of the same coin: grasp it firmly and spend it well."

I have been keeping this in mind as I begin to express my needs and wants and am working to get them met, and I think I am starting to get the hang of it!

1 comment:

  1. I love to read. I spend a lot of my time reading. . To the point where every good author I know of, I have read everything they have ever written, except perhaps high school essays. Does this make my a greedy reader? Yep. Do I regret it? Well, it cost me some parts of a social life in the past, and may have contributed to a rather sedentary lifestyle. . .But all in all, I don't regret it a bit.

    There are always limits, and costs to having large appetites. It is wist to look at those costs, decide to pay them, or not, and move on. But I recommend you avoid second guessing your appetites too much. To deny your needs, in favor of some mythical 'normalcy' is . . . Well, crazy by my standards.

    Let me return to those literary roots, and quote Robert A. Heinlein: "Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks."

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